Engineering Innovation Podcast and Radio Series

AI Poker Player

LEDE: A computer using artificial intelligence is taking on the world’s best poker players at a competition in Pittsburgh and, in a groundbreaking feat, it’s winning.

Randy Atkins: Poker is hard for artificial intelligence, since it involves such things as guessing at hidden cards. But a new program called Libratus may have mastered the game. Created by Tuomas Sandholm of Carnegie Mellon University, Libratus is currently playing thousands of Texas hold’em games one-on-one against professionals.

Tuomas Sandholm: We are trying to test whether the best artificial intelligence program for solving incomplete information games has actually surpassed the strategic reasoning capability of the best humans.

Randy Atkins: And Libratus is on a winning streak. It appears to have gotten the knack for doing things that humans usually to better…like bluffing and betting. Such poker skills are a step on the way to real-world uses.

Tuomas Sandholm: They can apply to many situations ranging from negotiation, bargaining, auctions, cybersecurity, military settings.

Randy Atkins: With the National Academy of Engineering, Randy Atkins, WTOP News.